Angry Amy Gets Ugly

This weekend, I had a really bad sandwich. No, not like my bologna was molding in the shape of a frowny face staring up at me. More like a bad movie sandwich, with two awesome action films as the bread and the terribly predictable battle-of-the-sexes flick, The Ugly Truth, as the meat. I totally love action movies so watching a chick flick in the middle was totally off-putting.

I'm not going to bother giving a proper *spoiler alert* warning here, because if you need me to warn you that this movie is as bad and formulaic as it looks, you've got some problems. I don't think I could put it any better than Pajiba did in their very brutal review, but I'll try to verbalize my complaints.

We'll start with the plot, which could not be a more predictable twist on a predictable genre. So you got your basic boy meets girl -- only you can tell that it's female writers because we get girl's perspective -- girl hates boy because he's a total douche (big surprise); boy likes girl because she's an uppity bitch that he can teach to let her hair down (literally - there are hair extensions); despite the fact that girl is successful somehow boy makes her feel self-conscious enough to follow his advice; both realize what they really want is someone to make them miserable; big make-out session in a green-screen hot air balloon ride. The end.

Katherine Heigl stars as Abby, a morning TV news producer who has such high expectations that she just can't seem to find a man who meets all of her criteria. Gerard Butler plays Mike, a womanizing playa who, despite his lack of interest in love, feels the need to get on cable access every night and tell it to 'em straight about the differences between men and women. (You see, men are simple creatures because all they want is a super hot woman who won't emasculate them by making more money than they do. Women, on the other hand, are shallow, controlling shrews because they want to have it all - an attractive man who makes a lot of money). I bet you see where this plot is going...Abby's boss brings Mike on the show and after initially hating him, Abby let's Mike give her advice on how to sink her meat claws into her dreamboat doctor neighbor. Even though Abby succeeds in getting her perfect guy through all of the sly tactics Mike teaches her, she still can't help falling in love with Mike for no apparent reason other than a sexy dancing scene. When she finally tells doctor dreamboat that she's been pretending to be less controlling than she actually is in real life (as shown literally by pulling out her hair extension to show that she actually has short hair -- the ultimate symbol of uptightness), he refuses to sleep with her. Whaaaa??!! This baffles me the most. If men are really simple creatures who just want sex, wouldn't he jump at the chance to sleep with her anyway? He's come this far, he might as well go all the way.

But more than the overall plot line, it was the small, inaccurate details that made me the most angry - from the scene where they all ride together in one car to dinner but leave in separate cars to the finale that insisted on taking place in a hot air balloon but clearly had no effects budget. I mean, seriously, green screen? Seriously?! I'm surprised the driving scenes weren't just a projection of a road passing by a prop car. Then, there's the fact that a late-night cable access show about how men like their sex somehow got ratings through the roof in one night, enough to be translated into a feature on a Sacramento morning news program the very next day (which, I have to point out, would have been only hours later - but I guess that doesn't matter because no one in the movie seems to have to get up early for their morning news show). Now, I'm no expert in television ratings, but I'm pretty sure you can't build up that big a following in one night, especially when your show's premise is to basically yell at women that they aren't hot enough or giving enough blow jobs. Not to mention that even if that were possible, I just don't buy that this would be a feature on the local news - and that's actually saying a lot. I've seen the Fox 9 local news program in Minneapolis do a three-part series on what your pets are doing while you're at work (THREE PARTS!) and I still don't think that they would do a recurring sexpert feature that drags all of their personal relationship problems out on the air.

Also completely unrealistic is the scene where Mike gives Abby a pair of vibrating panties to help her masturbate, which of course she puts on right before an impromptu dinner with network executives. BTW -- if I never have to hear Gerard Butler say the words "flicking the bean" ever again, I'll be the happiest woman on earth. In what I believe is intended to be a "funny" When Harry Met Sally spoof, the underwear gets turned on to vibrate by a curious fat kid who finds its remote, and Abby has a painful orgasm in front of the big wigs. And even though it sounds more like she's constipated, they all get all hot and bothered. Gross!

So I guess the lessons we should learn from this film are that assholes and control freaks are a match made in heaven, and if you don't want to become a cat-lady spinster, you have two choices: 1) be super hot, completely devoid of personality, and give a lot of blow jobs or 2) settle.

This entry was posted by Lady Amy, on Tuesday, August 18, 2009. You can leave your response.